My Gear
Everything You Need. Nothing You Don't.Happy Olympus Shooter
I shoot with Olympus (Micro Four Thirds) Gear, and have been since the beginning of my “serious’ photography, which was in 2007. My first “pro” level camera was an Olympus E3, and I loved that camera from the day I bought it. I am now shooting with their flagship camera, the OMD EM1 Mark 2.
Before I got the E3 (circa 2007), I was not into photography. In fact, I generally considered photography buffs to be either hopeless nerds or obsessive documentarians who recorded their lives but neglected to experience them. But I started a business in 2003, and that business required a website, and websites needed images, even back in the Pleistocene age. So…I bought my first camera, a Canon Powershot, to make images for my business. The business didn’t take off. But my love affair with photography did.
So I wanted to get deeper into photography and I decided I had to get a “real” camera. In a world where the conventional wisdom was that for serious photographers, it was Canon and Nikon or you weren’t that serious, I chose Olympus. Why? At the time, I was clueless about sensor size, or why it would even matter. I knew nothing of focal length or depth of field. No…I chose Olympus because they had the only “pro” level camera that was weather-sealed and had a flip-out LCD screen. The weather sealing, I figured, was perfect for me because I’m lousy at babying any sort of gear. The flip-out screen was a feature of the Canon Powershot which I found super useful. And yet no “pro” grade camera by any manufacturer had that feature…except Olympus. It struck me that Olympus was trying to make their cameras useful, not trying to pander to some received wisdom about what constitutes a “professional” camera. Canon had put the flip-out LCD on their “consumer” cameras, but I guess they were concerned about offending “real” photographers by adding this amateurish gimmick it to the top of the line cameras. Whereas somebody at Olympus must have said “hey that’s useful…let’s add that”. Now its a must-have feature on all high-end cameras. Olympus was ahead of the game.
On the Innovation Train
And ten years on, Olympus has kept the faith on making great photography tools with innovative features that help you get the shot you want. They jumped into mirrorless early and with both feet. I believe they are still the only company that ditched the mirror completely and stopped making DSLR’s, enabling focus on driving their mirrorless tech forward.
Along the way I discovered that their lenses are second to none, and that the small sensor size apparently makes it more feasible to pack in more features. So with Olympus you get game changing stuff like class-leading weather sealing, in-body image stabilization, super-high frame rates, live composite mode, pixel-shift high-resolution mode, and more. All of these features are game-changers which dramatically improve my day-to-day photography experience and improve the work I am able to create. If you doubt this claim, buy me a beer and I’ll prove it.
So yes, I am a major Olympus fan boy. At this point, I wouldn’t care to shoot with anything else. And yes, I am aware of the limitations that come with a smaller sensor. The corollary is that there are advantages as well, and they outweigh the disadvantages for me. As with most things in photography, it depends on your style and your preferences. But no matter what, I am anxious to see what’s next in photography gear. Innovation is happening at warp speed now. It’s a very cool time to be a photography geek.